


Ten second cars

by MarauderCracker



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Childhood friends!Bellamy&Nathan, F/F, F/M, Fast and Furious AU, Finn is dead as hell, M/M, Mention of Suicidal Ideation, Minor Drug Use, Undercover cop!Bellamy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-06-10 03:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6937348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarauderCracker/pseuds/MarauderCracker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He sees her and instantly decides the mugshots don't do her justice. Raven Reyes has a wrench in one hand and a roll of bills in the other, and she's yelling at a guy. "Get your ass here, Mbege!" she calls, raising the money up in the air for him to see. The guy rushes to her side. "Twenty five grand. Let's see which one of this losers is gonna match it."</p><p>
  <b>[You don't need to watch F&F to understand the plot.]</b>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Twenty five grands

**Author's Note:**

> This is a mash-up of the plot of The Fast and The Furious and 2Fast 2Furious, plus some added bullshit. It's not supposed to be an exact lift of any of them. You don't need to watch the movies to understand it.

The first thing Nathan does, after not seeing Bellamy Blake in six years, is grab the nearest blunt object in his reach and throw it at his car. The wrench smashes through the windshield and Bellamy sighs deeply. Nathan walks the couple feet to the sidewalk and stands at the very edge of his front lawn. "If you want a hug, man, you gotta come in. I can't set foot past this line."

Bellamy's hug is all-encompassing --he's still just a tad taller, though not as skinny as he was when they were kids-- and it lasts entirely too long. If Nathan buries his face against Bellamy's shoulder for a minute, he thinks half a decade of hating him and missing him and hating him some more justifies it.

"I'm sorry," Bellamy starts, but Nathan interrupts him quick enough, pulls at his shoulder and gestures towards the open door of his garage.

"First, let's get some beer."

 

"You should have beat my face in," Bellamy says, trying to pass it at as a joke but meaning it. He'd expected Nathan to break his nose and tell him to go fuck himself, and he knows he would have deserved it, but Nathan just shakes his head.

"You know I wouldn't do that," he says, and Bellamy has missed his calm words and his tired smile more than he'd ever realized. "You still a cop, I imagine?" Nathan asks, and it doesn't sound angry. Bellamy nods. 

"I'm actually here because of that--" he begins, avoids Nathan's gaze. He starts apologizing on a rush, scrambling for words. "I would-- No, I probably wouldn't have come otherwise. I didn't think you would ever want to see me again. I know Octavia doesn't." He's holding the beer too tightly, the cold metal of the can burning his fingers a little. He doesn't look up, doesn't want to see Nathan's reaction. "But I can offer you a deal and I thought that, even if you hated me, you might still accept."

He can see Nathan shifting out of the corner of his eye, raises his eyes reluctantly, but Nathan is just looking at him with curiosity. "I'm going undercover, and I need a partner. A street racer. The Police doesn't have any other detective who could, but you--"

"I don't race anymore," Nathan says, and shifts on his chair to show the monitor on his ankle. Bellamy finally puts the beer down, reaches for his backpack. He pulls out a file.

"We're going after a gang in Miami. People down there remember you."

He shows him the names, the photos. Nathan used to run with Monroe, a childhood friend of his who's still respected in the Miami circles. Bellamy points at a blonde girl. "She's dating Harper, who's in the gang we're targeting."

"Why them?" Nathan asks, and Bellamy can hear the weariness in his voice. He wouldn't want to take another friend down, but Bellamy had guessed that already. 

"They're the starting point. They're a bunch of strays, petty criminals and street racers who grew up together. We're actually after Wallace, an arms dealer working with the Koreans, but there is no chance of infiltrating them."

"So Monroe would be safe?" Nathan asks, narrowing his eyes as he flips through the evidence file. Bellamy decides to go with the truth. Well, with some of it. 

"If she was somehow involved, no. But it looks like they've stayed on this side of the law in the past few years... for the most part. The Police isn't interested in arresting a bunch of street-racers and weed dealers, they want Wallace."

Nathan stares at the file for a minute more, at the page with the printed deal that the Police is offering. Then he nods. "Completely clean record, forreal?" he asks, and flashes Bellamy a crooked smile.

 

* * *

 

 

"So you just gonna lose the last of your money in your fifth night?" Nathan asks, grinning. Bellamy scoffs and focuses on checking the engine. He hasn't been up and close with a real engine in a couple years, but these past days he's been getting familiar with everything again. He still remembers how to drive, but he hasn't won a single race yet, and they haven't made contact with Reyes' gang.

"Who says I'm gonna lose it?" he fires back, and Nathan lets out a snort. He leans against the driver's door, lights up a cigarette. Bellamy makes a face when the smoke reaches his nose. Nathan wants to say something stupid, something like 'you broke my heart' or 'I still haven't read that book you got me for my twenty first birthday, I was too angry to start it but I could never force myself to throw it away'. Instead he scans the crowd around them, checks out the cars that are going to race.

"Sweet paint job," a blatantly stoned guy tells him, smiling more at the car than at Nathan as he approaches them. Nathan recognizes him from the file, but can't remember his name. 

"Thanks man, but it's his," he says, pointing with his head at Bellamy, who seems to be checking the oil. "You race?" 

"Nah, I'm just the cheerleader. And your friendly neighborhood dealer. Wanna get high?"

Nathan shoots Bellamy a look, but Bell has his back to him, his attention somewhere on the other side of the street. Nathan shrugs. "Sure. I'm Nathan, by the way."

"Monty. So, what brings you to Miami, Nathan?"

 

He sees her and instantly decides the mugshots don't do her justice. Raven Reyes has a wrench in one hand and a roll of bills in the other, and she's yelling at a guy. "Get your ass here, Mbege!" she calls, raising the money up in the air for him to see. The guy rushes to her side. "Twenty five grand. Let's see which one of these losers is gonna match it."

Bellamy knows that he has less than five grands, but this is his chance to impress her. Even if they actually find Monroe and get her to introduce them, he knows that the best way into her inner circle is through racing. He looks around for Nathan, but he's nowhere to be seen, so he just closes his car's hood and walks up to her. 

"Twenty five to enter, man," Mbege says, looking Bellamy up and down. He's the one taking bets during all the important races, and he's been taking Bellamy's money since the first night. 

"I'm outta cash, but I've got a ten second Mitsubishi," he says, praying that this is the right move. She throws a curious glance his way, and says something in Spanish and the woman working on her engine laughs. 

"Okay, that's good too. Twenty five grand or a car! Who wants to race tonight?" Mbege calls, raising the money he's just been given. A majority of the people around shake their heads and step away, but two step forward instead. "My girl Emori! How you doing, babe?"

"Como vai você?" she says, smirking. She hands Mbege the money with a wink and moves to greet Reyes with a kiss on the cheek. "Ready to get your ass kicked?"

Raven laughs at this, but her smile disappears as soon as the last racer steps into their little circle. Bellamy recognizes him from the file too. He's Cage Wallace, one of his main targets. The stiffness in Mbege's posture and the open disgust shown by everyone don't seem to affect Wallace at all. 

"I'm sure that there are a couple useful parts in that pile of shit you call a car," he tells Bellamy with an artificial smile in his face. Bellamy considers bashing his face in, but thinks better of it. 

"You won't get to drive it, don't worry."

 

Nathan's face and chest ache from laughing so hard. Monty gestures like he's pouring a liquid into something. "I emptied the bottle! If my friend Monroe hadn't come in and noticed the smell, I would have blown up the shop. Now I'm not allowed near the garage when I'm high." Nathan gasps for breath as he accepts the blunt that Monty is handing him. 

"I think that's a very safe policy," he says, and takes a hit. Three years in jail and another three of house arrest hadn't allowed him to have a lot of fun, and Nathan had almost forgotten what being high was like. The smoke burns a little, but he manages not to cough.

"Oh, man, the race's starting!" Monty grabs Nathan's upper arm and tugs, dragging him through the crowd. When they make it to the very center of the road, where four cars are getting in line, he points towards a black and red Mazda. "That's my friend Raven, she's the best racer in Miami." He points at the green Toyota to the left, explains that it belongs to a chick named Emori. "Good driver, bad car. She's gonna lose." Then there's Bellamy's car, and last a ridiculously expensive BMW. 

"What kinda dick races in a BMW?" Nathan asks, while a guy moves to stand in the middle of the street with a shirt held up in the air like a flag. Monty makes a face.

"Cage Wallace. Rich white dude, got a hand in every dirty business in Miami. Hopefully he'll wreck his car and we won't see him around until his daddy buys a new one for him."

Nathan, remembering that Bellamy is supposed to be investigating the Wallaces, wants to inquire further, but he doesn't get a chance. The flag goes down, and a roar of engines and people cheering swallows his voice. 

 

Bellamy loses. Again. He's almost there, almost has it. Emori pushes Wallace out of the road but loses a wheel in the process, and then there's just him and Raven, nose to nose. Almost there,  but he uses the nitrous boost way too soon. He should have counted on Reyes to have a turbocharger too --his car is overheating and suddenly she's rushing towards the finish line while his own engine dies. His car rolls the last half-mile by inertia, and slows down to a stand still in the middle of the laughing crowd.

"Aw, pobrecito! You'll get another shot someday, don't worry," she calls from where she's leaning against the door of her car. She shifts so she can reach through the open window and pulls a crutch out of the car, hooks her left arm over it and walks up to him with a wide, mocking grin. "Hand over the keys, vamos."

Bellamy reaches into his pocket, pulls the keys out reluctantly as he takes a few steps forward, wishing to make the walk shorter for her. "I almost had you, though," he says, grinning down at her when she's close enough to take the keys from his hand. Reyes scoffs.

"You almost had me? Por favor! You never had me --you never had your car... Granny shifting, not double clutching like you should. You're lucky that hundred shot of NOS didn't blow the welds on the intake! You almost had me?"

The woman he recognizes as Monroe steps closer, arms crossed over her chest. "Get this clown out of here, come on," a guy Bellamy doesn't recognize calls. There are laughs from the crowd. Raven walks around him and goes to open the hood of Bellamy's car. A cloud of smoke comes out of it and there is more than one boo from the people around them. 

"Now I've gotta rip apart the engine and replace the piston rings you fried." She closes the hood again and faces Bellamy. "Ask any racer. Any real racer. It don't matter if you win by an inch or a mile. Winning's winning." 

She reaches with her hand, offering her open palm for Bellamy to drop the keys in, and the people around them laugh. Bellamy spots Nathan among them, and Nathan gives him a shrug that looks an awful lot like 'I told you so'.

Then, the sirens start blaring.


	2. Ten second cars

 

"This way! This way!" Monty is tugging at his arm again, elbowing and pushing people to open a path for them through the crowd. The people have swallowed Bellamy and the sirens are dangerously close. He hopes that Bell is rushing out of here too and follows Monty. 

Monty guides them through a small and dark alley that separates two buildings, jumping over the fence at the end of the alley and across a series of poorly illuminated streets. Every few minutes they see the flashing lights of a patrol car and stop to hide in the shadows, or stumble upon another person getting away from the race and tell them where not to go. Finally, after they've been running for almost ten minutes, Monty calls for them to stop. 

"I don't hear them anymore. I think we lost them for good." He drops down to sit on the sidewalk, panting, and Nathan does the same. "Ah, man, I hate cops. You got a smoke?"

He lights his own cigarette and, as he hands Monty the lighter to light his, he says, "my dad was a cop." He looks around the empty street, at the few windows with the lights still on. "He was never around and I hated him for it. Stole my first car when I was fifteen." He knows his smile looks bitter and forced as he says, "a cop from his precinct busted me when I was nineteen. I got five years, got out last June."

That last line is part of his cover, but everything else is true. He knows that Bellamy's fake persona supposedly did two years in L.A. too, but the truth is that Nathan got busted and Bellamy managed to get away thanks to the lack of evidence against him. The story is cleaner this way, neater. In the version that will show up if anyone searches for them, there is no heartbreak and no resentment. Bellamy doesn't join the academy, doesn't lose all ties with his sister, doesn't become a cop, doesn't spend six years without calling. Nathan likes it. 

"That's shit, I'm sorry." Monty puts a hand on Nathan's upper arm and squeezes, and this time the smile doesn't feel so plastic on Nathan's face. "Come on, let's go find somewhere where we can get a burger. I'm starving."

 

The sirens are closing in and Bellamy doesn't know Miami well enough to get away. He's still in his car --that is no longer his car, but Raven jumped into her own car and drove away before he could hand her the keys-- and the engine is struggling, but it can still carry him for a couple miles. If he can only find a way to get out of this neighborhood without getting caught. 

He takes a turn and sees Raven stepping out an underground parking lot, walking as fast as she can with her crutch. Bellamy remembers reading in her profile that she lost mobility in her leg after getting shot in a gang dispute and wonders if she carries a gun with her. 

"Hey!" he calls out of his window as he drives slowly, trying to match her pace. "What happened to your car?"

"The cops will be looking for it," she responds, still walking. "You lost or something?" The lights from the car nor the dim streetlamps above manage to shine on Raven's face, but Bellamy guesses she must be giving him that same unimpressed look from before. He's lost indeed, but he doesn't want to admit it. 

"I--" the blue and red glow of a patrol car appears at the corner where Raven is heading. Another one in the opposite end of the block. Raven looks both ways, then throws Bellamy a look. "Get in. Is there another way exit in that parking lot?"

Raven rushes to get in the car. She hasn't even closed her door when Bellamy hits the accelerator, shifts the wheel violently and rushes them into the parking lot. She holds the crutch between her legs and guides him through the ramps while she pulls out her phone. 

Bellamy sees her typing out of the corner of his eye, but he can't afford to try and read what she's writing right now. He knows that at least one of the police cars is following them, and he doesn't know how long his engine will hold up. "Here, left," Raven says. He takes the turn rather abruptly and grazes a column with an ugly, screeching sound.

"Stop fucking up my car, por el amor de dios," Reyes tells him as they make it out on the other side of the block. Bellamy doesn't know if she's serious. "Turn right."

Bellamy has to take more than one violent U-turn and the engine is definitely starting to over-heat again, but they manage to lose the cops in the next few minutes. Reyes stays on her phone, giving him directions occasionally but mostly just texting. Then, suddenly, she looks at him and asks, "what's your name?"

"Bellamy O'Brian," he tells her, a little startled. He asks why, but Raven types into her phone instead of answering. He wants to reach for his own phone and call Nathan, but he has to make sure that they've truly gotten away before. Finally, after a minute of silence, Raven speaks up again. 

"My friend Monty is with your friend Nathan. They're fine." She shifts in the seat and grabs her left thigh with both hands to shift it so she can stretch more comfortably. "My name is Raven, by the way."

"Reyes, I know. Well, every street racer in Miami knows." He can see a hint of pride in her smile after hearing that. He looks around, notices that the signs in the shops and restaurants he can see aren't in English. "I... I think I'm lost."

Raven looks out of the window, then looks at Bellamy, dead serious. "We really need to get out of here. Turn left here, this is Park's territory." 

 

They eat as many fries as they possibly can and then smoke up again in the parking lot behind McDonald's. Bellamy is safe, they are not being chased by anyone and this freedom he's enjoying is hanging on Bellamy actually being able to bust the Wallaces, so Nathan wants to hold onto it as hard as he can, for as long as he has it.

Monty is telling another story about the garage he works in, impersonating a guy called Lincoln. "You know, like, when the bad guys try to take on a superhero and the superhero just blocks their punches without any actual effort until they tire themselves out?" Smoke slips out of his mouth as he speaks.

"You're cute," Nathan interrupts, and Monty grins at him. 

"Cute? That's all?" 

"A little annoying, but really cute," Nathan jokes, and Monty grabs his upper arm and pulls, drags him in for a kiss.

 

They've made it three blocks before the bikes appear. They're racing bikes, black and slick and definitely faster than Bellamy's wrecked car. Two of them stay at their rear while the other two circle them until they are cutting the road. Bellamy sees the gun just on time, yells, "get down!" as he hits the brakes. 

The windshield turns into a rain of broken glass over their heads, and Bellamy reaches under his seat. Raven's hand grabs his wrist before he can pull out his gun. "Hold the fire, shooter. They just wanna scare us, if you fire back they'll kill us for sure." 

The stream of fire from an automatic destroys the rest of the windows and Bellamy can feel the tires deflating. It lasts almost thirty seconds and Raven doesn't let go of his wrist. The shots stop as abruptly as they started.

"Stay out of Azgeda's territory, bitch!" a guy calls. There's the sound of engines reeving and then the bikes are driving away. When they finally dare lift their heads, they both see the smoke coming out of the engine instantly. 

"Get out, get out, get--" He moves over the shift stick, helping Raven out as best as he can. She stumbles onto the asphalt until she can balance her weight on the crutch, and Bellamy follows her, still holding out his arm to catch her if she falls. As soon as his feet are on the floor, he hooks an arm around Raven's waist and pulls her as far away from the car as possible. The heat of the explosion brushes their backs, but they manage to fall down on the floor with nothing more than a few cuts and scrapes. 

They stare at the car in flames for a few seconds, sitting shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh on the asphalt. "The cops are gonna be here soon. Help me get up," Raven says, her arm shifting against Bellamy's. He jumps up and helps Raven stand, then reaches to brush a piece of glass off her shoulder. 

"I guess I owe you a ten second car," he says, and Raven laughs.

 

They kiss against a car in the McDonald's parking lot, and against a wall with Che Guevara's face spray-painted on it, and against the door to Monty's building, and against the mirror in his elevator. Monty kisses full of energy, catching Nathan's lower lip between his teeth and pulling, sucking on his tongue for a second and then shifting to mouth at Nathan's jawline. Nathan can feel Monty's smile against his lips, against his cheek, against his neck.

Nathan presses him against the door to his apartment and feels up Monty's jacket until he finds the keys, pulling them out with an ease he had thought lost. Monty's hands pull at the hem of his shirt, and Nathan finally pulls back.

"We should--"

"Yeah, just let me find--"

Nathan offers Monty his keys back with a grin, and Monty just stares at them for a second. Despite the very green, very visible UFO key-chain, he still looks like he doesn't want to believe that those are his keys and he didn't notice being pickpocket'd. He checks his jacket, narrowing his eyes at Nathan when he's sure that there isn't a second set of keys there.

"I'm sure that there is a joke about handcuffs that I should be making right now, but I'm like... really high, and," he snatches the keys from Nathan's hand, "I really want to get you naked sometime soon."

He shifts against Nathan, turning around to open the door and pressing his back to Nathan's chest. The door opens with a click and Nathan kisses the back of Monty's neck as they step in together, his hands on each side of Monty's waist. 

 

"Overall a big pile of crap. It's better now, though." Raven's crutch and the metal heel of her combat boots form a peculiar rhythm on the pavement as they walk. She gestures with her free hand, as if hand-waving the bad years away. "I'm saving up the money from the races, so next year Monty and I are going to _college_." 

Her smile is so bright when she says it, Bellamy feels like something is pressing against his sternum and pushing the air out of his lungs. He thinks of the FBI file on her, of the nasty words his handler used to describe her. Nobody mentioned her 4.0 GPA or that she was valedictorian, not a single cop even bothered talking about how she took all the other foster kids with her and made sure that they had a roof over their heads after turning eighteen because she knew nobody else cared. 

"That sounds great," he tells her, smiling down at her, and it looks like she's making a conscious effort to contain her smile. She shrugs, looks away from him. 

"Yeah, it's gonna be really cool. If Monty doesn't blow up anything on campus, of course. Did ya go to college?"

Bellamy shakes his head. "Nah, I was--" in the police academy, estranged from his sister and his best friend, alone, wishing he was dead more often than not "--doing time, actually. Miller and I got busted with a stolen car."

Raven looks back up at him, and Bellamy wonders if she's going to tell him about the two years she did for armed robbery. "That's shit. Would you have gone, though? To college, I mean."

"Yeah, I wanted to be a history major as a kid," he tells her, and Raven snorts. "What? History is cool." 

"History is so not cool," Raven tells him, shaking her head. Bellamy wants to argue, but she cuts him off by pulling a set of keys out of her jacket and pointing at a closed down garage. "This is Sinclair's shop. Wanna steal his beer?"


	3. A family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for vague (but definitely there) mentions of child abuse/PTSD.

 

 

"How did you manage to lose fifty thousand dollars _and_ the car?" 

Bellamy hates his handler so fucking much, he can't even word it. He clenches his fists and lowers his head and tries to prepare himself for the half-an-hour long speech on how much of an idiot he is that's coming, but Nathan speaks up before Griffin can start.

"People like a good loser. If he'd started out winning, nobody would have wanted to race him." He looks like the smartass kid he was back in high-school, sprawled on a chair with his arms firmly crossed in front of his chest and the beanie on his head almost covering his eyebrows. He doesn't even bother looking up from his phone as he speaks, and Bellamy can tell that Griffin is endlessly annoyed by that fact. "Now people see him as non-threatening. Reyes offered to let us work from her shop, the guy running bets likes Bellamy--"

Griffin looks ready to take Nathan's pause as a chance to interrupt, but Bellamy remembers something. "I got a shoe in with Azgeda, too. A racer called Echo."

Jaha, the FBI analyst who's been working with them on the case, speaks just as Griffin is opening her mouth (she looks rather unhappy about it). "Echo Brown? She's been with them for years, how did you get to her?"

"I lost ten grand to her so she offered to pay for my beer," Bellamy says, shrugging. Nathan snorts.

 

* * *

 

"What is that piece of shit and why is it in my garage?" Reyes yells, using one of her crutches to point at the beat up car that Bellamy and Nathan have just finished pushing into the shop. Bellamy grins bashfully down at her and something clenches in Nathan's stomach.

"Hey, what are you doing here?"

Nathan turns away from Bellamy and Reyes (who is cursing in Spanish while she looks at the car with open disgust) to find Monty smiling at him. The weird tension from a second ago is replaced by what only be described at "butterflies in his stomach", and Nathan kind of wants to punch himself in the face.

"Hey. I, uh-- Bell lost a car to your boss, remember?"

"Ah, Raven isn't the actual boss. I mean, she kinda is, but Sinclair owns the place."

Monty's smile is easy and relaxed, and he gestures for Nathan to follow him with absolute familiarity. As they step in the small office at the back of the shop, he can hear Raven yelling "a ten minute car, that's what it is!"

Monty starts the coffeemaker and points at an old, worn-out sofa. "Make yourself comfortable. Just ignore any suspicious stains." Nathan rolls his eyes at him, but sits down anyway. While Monty opens and closes drawers in search of a pair of mugs, Nathan looks around the place.

The office looks like a re-purposed kitchen; the tiled floor covered in grease stains and the chipped paint of the walls almost completely hidden by posters of racing cars, drawings and pictures of the employees. The tiny desk in a corner is covered in receipts and files, and the door on the wall opposite Nathan has a hand-written sign that reads "flush the toilet or die". Over the counter where the coffeemaker is placed there is a big picture with almost ten people on it, standing outside the shop.

He's trying to make out the people in the picture without having to stand up when Monty turns away from the coffeemaker and smiles at him, successfully distracting Nathan from the photo without even trying. He moves to drop on the sofa next to Nathan and throws his feet on Nathan's lap easily, grease-stained sneakers quickly dirtying Nathan's jeans.

"Raven is gonna kill your friend," Monty says, obviously amused. Raven's voice filters through the thin walls as she mocks Bellamy's car in a quick mix of English and Spanish. Nathan puts on his best poker face, shakes his head.

"I don't know him."

 

"I should beat your ass," Raven says, but she sounds way less intimidating when her lips are curved in a soft smile and she's looking at Bellamy with faint amusement. Bellamy does his best impression of a kicked dog, the one he usually saves for his bosses when he's getting reprimanded for something. Raven seems happy enough, uses one of her crutches to beckon him into the shop.

"Parts don't grow on trees through, and I'm guessing you are broke as hell, así que tendrás que ponerte a trabaj-- oh, my God, are they--"

Bellamy follows the direction of Raven's gaze towards what he knows to be the shop's office slash kitchen. The door is open just enough for them to see Nathan pressing Raven's friend (Monty, Bellamy remembers) against the counter, Monty's elbow dangerously close to knocking on the coffeemaker and causing a goddamn mess.

Raven turns straight around and heads in the opposite direction, and Bellamy follows. Raven guides him through a small hallway at the back of the shop, pushing discarded parts and pieces of wire away with her crutches as she walks. "Jacapo!"

She pushes through a curtain (that looks a lot like re-purposed Superman bed-sheets), Bellamy a few steps behind her, and the sounds of friendly laughter and chatter instantly make him want to bolt. Raven must feel it, because she pulls the curtain completely open and calls, "Come on, O'Brian!"

He steps inside a kitchen --a real kitchen, not the tiny office in the shop where they keep snacks and beer-- where four people are playing cards and sharing coffee over a tiny round table. "This is Indra, Anya and Marcus. And, of course, Jacapo Sinclair, your new boss." Raven points at them, who all raise their mugs in greeting.

Bellamy recognizes Indra and Anya from the criminal records he studied. They are part of the same crew, both with at least a couple of years on them for street-racing and robbery. Marcus Kane is a local politician --Bellamy doesn't remember what he does, exactly, but he probably shouldn't be associating with known criminals. Sinclair doesn't have a criminal record, but the police and FBI are sure that he's in on the latest wave of robberies and truck hijackings in the area.

"And this is Bellamy O'Brian."

Sinclair switches his cards from hand to hand so he can greet Bellamy with a proper handshake. He smiles easy, friendly --reminds Bellamy of a Bio teacher he had in high school-- and says, "I hear you are a terrible racer."

Bellamy laughs, accepts the handshake and the joke easily.

 

Monty and Nathan are sprawled on the couch, talking about the car Nathan's been supposedly fixing so he could run again (it's actually been provided by the police, of course) when Monroe and Harper show up. They come in laughing and making noise, barging into the office like a two-person hurricane.

"Hey, Monty, Lincoln asks if there's any beer left;" Harper starts, cheerful, but she immediately drops her smile, replacing it with a gesture of curious scrutiny when she spots Nathan next to her friend. "Oh, who are you?"

Before Monty or Nathan can answer, Monroe spots Nathan over Harper's shoulder and almost yells, "Miller?"

Monroe looks just like Nathan remembers her, her lopsided, surprised grin a flashback from better times. When she offers her open arms, Nathan jumps off the couch to hug her. She speaks against his shoulder and slaps his back with a little more force than necessary. "Man, it's been so long!" She steps back just a little, frowns for a second. "Too long. What the fuck are you doing here?"

Nathan purposefully ignores the whispered "me" that Monty throws Harper as she steals his place on the couch. Monroe is pushing him back by the shoulders so she can look him up and down, and he allows the scrutiny for a moment.

"I'm glad to see you whole and alive, Miller. I really am."

They sit on top of the desk while Monty and Harper stay on the couch, and Nathan tells her about finally being one hundred percent free, about the money he's supposedly been saving, about wanting to race again. Monroe tells him about her life after high school --that she stayed out of trouble, did a couple years in community college before dropping out, met Harper in the street-racing scene.

"We heard you got busted but nobody could contact you, y'know?"

Nathan lets her pat his upper arm in apology and hand-waves the whole thing away, as if his friends' absence hadn't felt like a punch to the gut back then. He knows the answer to his next question (the cops told him) but he asks anyway. "Atom and Connor?"

"Atom OD'd... I think it was around the same time we got the news of your arrest. Connor... Remember that piece of shit, Murphy? They got in a fight and Murphy punctured his stomach, didn't even call 911. I think the fucker did a couple months in juvie for that." Nathan nods, feels the same acidic taste on the back of his throat that showed up when the cops let him take a look at his high school friends' records. Monroe's expression is just as grim, but she manages a small, sad smile. "If Harper hadn't showed up I might have killed Murphy myself."

Harper throws Monroe a shy smile from the couch, and Monroe's eyes are suddenly a little bright. She clears her throat, says, "Sinclair and Raven took us all in. We'd probably be all in jail or dead if it wasn't for them."

As he throws an arm over Monroe's shoulders, Nathan is suddenly deeply grateful that the cops aren't actually after Raven Reyes' crew.

 

Raven drags him back to the shop, introduces him to the group. In the half an hour Bellamy spent drinking coffee and answering seemingly innocent questions about his past, the garage filled with people.

There's Monty Green, the guy that he saw with Nathan earlier. Bellamy is absolutely sure that he's high, though he gives off the vibe that he must have the same vaguely amused smirk on his face most of the time.

There's Monroe, their intended way in, Nathan's childhood friend. She's much like Nathan, a silent and calm presence balancing out the manic energy that radiates off Raven and Monty.

Harper, the girlfriend, jokes with Monty and points to where all the important tools are located. Bellamy thinks he could like her and Monroe if the circumstances were different. All of them, really, Lincoln too.

He's the last person he meets. "Lincoln, we have people here!" Raven yells, and the buzzing sound that Bellamy had misidentified as an air filtering system stops. Lincoln appears from behind a wall, wearing overalls that are covered in colorful paint, and immediately runs to hug Raven, who ducks and tries to hurry away with her crutch, but fails miserably. "Si me pintaste la ropa te juro q--"

"Relax, it's all dry paint, I was cleaning up the paint sprayer," he tells her, smiling brightly at her as he loosens the hug and instead throws an arm over her shoulders. He greets Nathan and Bellamy with a bright smile, offers to show them around the shop and the car he's been painting.

As they all talk around him and tell them about just how great working with Sinclair is and show them around the garage, Bellamy starts feeling a little sick. He pushes the feeling down, reminds himself he can't get attached to these people. Hopes Nathan understands that too.

 

* * *

 

Nathan wins his first race in the beat up blue Honda the cops found for him and he pockets five grands. It's exhilarating, like doing skateboard tricks with Connor was, like stealing BMWs with Bellamy was. After, he pays for drinks and food for the entirety of Reyes' crew and, with Bellamy at his right and Monroe on his left, he feels more at home than he's had in years. 

"We jumped a wall and landed in some douchebag's pool, stayed inside the water for almost an hour until we were sure that the cops were gone. I was so sure we would die of hypothermia." Nathan says, glares in mock-anger at Bellamy. Lincoln and Raven laugh out loud.

"You had your phone and wallet on you, god. I wouldn't have imagined a single person could know the amount of insults and curses you threw at me when you realized your phone was ruined." Bellamy's smile is warm and fond, and Nathan can't help but smile back.

"Miller? Swearing? Impossible," Monroe chimes in, grinning. Nathan pretends to be offended, but Monroe ignores him, turns to the rest of the table instead. "Did Miller tell y'all about the time we stole a shopping cart from Walmart and he sprained his ankle?"

 

* * *

 

Bellamy still, deep at the bottom of his stomach, believes that Nathan will eventually snap and try to beat his face in. It's not a rational belief --Nathan isn't a violent person, wasn't even during his most reckless years-- but Bellamy thinks it's only natural, only fair.

"Monroe told me that they were angry. Connor the most, because he always knew that he couldn't afford college no matter how hard he wanted it, but I had that option. I could have made something of myself, I guess, but I threw it away. And Connor didn't wanna call me or see me because he was pissed off that I was going to jail instead of college."

Nathan's laughter is hollow and bitter, tired. Bellamy doesn't flinch when he notices Nathan shifting at his side (because it would be stupid, because he's trained himself not to) but Nate only reaches for his hand, tangles his fingers with Bellamy like they used to when they were kids.

"I understood. I was angry, but always knew that if it came down to me or Octavia, you'd choose her."

At that, Bellamy finally looks at Nathan. He seems tired, but the last couple days of racing and having fun and being back in the city where he grew up (being free) have done him good. Bellamy wishes this could last.

"I gave them Jasper." Nathan catches Bellamy's eye, confused. "I would never have given you up, you know that, right? I gave them Jasper because he was still sixteen, he would only get a few months of juvie."

Nathan snorts, shakes his head.

"He told us you gave us all up, Fox and Maya and me. But I should have guessed when he only got community service."

It's not funny but they laugh anyway. Bellamy never saw Fox or Jasper again, Octavia left the week after he told her he was joining the academy. Bellamy couldn't visit Nathan only to tell him he'd become a cop, so he never visited. Their laughter doesn't last much. Nathan's grip on Bellamy's hand is still tight.

"You still broke my fucking heart, Bellamy."

They sit in silence for a while after that, until Raven, Lincoln and Monroe barge through the door and turn on the roof's lights. Their let go of the other's hand at the same time, but stay sitting close together.

"O'Brian, you're on cleaning duty! We're officially closed for the day!" Monroe informs, as they all come to sit on the edge of the shop's roof with them. Lincoln passes the beers around, saving the alcohol-free ones for Monroe and for him. The rest of them join them slowly, Sinclair throwing a stern but kind reminder at Bellamy not to forget to sweep the floors before leaving. 

**Author's Note:**

> No offense but did y'all notice that the Fast Franchise has way more named and prominent women of color than The 100?


End file.
